


Hypoxia's A Bitch - Deleted Scene

by FreyaOdin



Series: Come Fly With Me Outtakes [4]
Category: Pentatonix, Superfruit
Genre: Angst, Aviation, M/M, Pilots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29489211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaOdin/pseuds/FreyaOdin
Summary: Scott's oxygen levels may not be all they're cracked up to be.A deleted scene from my longer ficCome Fly With Me.
Relationships: Mitch Grassi/Scott Hoying
Series: Come Fly With Me Outtakes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058522
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Hypoxia's A Bitch - Deleted Scene

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Come Fly With Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141053) by [FreyaOdin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaOdin/pseuds/FreyaOdin). 



> Okay, so here's the first of my actually deleted scenes from Come Fly With Me. Initially, I’d planned a very different interaction between Scott, Aiko the Japan Airlines pilot, and the Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center controller during Scott’s initial mayday call, before I realized the scene wasn’t plausible:

“Kansas Cit...ay again...ican 6226?” comes the garbled voice of a controller. “Wha...gency? ...ly hear you.”

Scott swears and hits his mic again, trying to enunciate more clearly. “American 6226. Mayday mayday mayday. Depressurization. Lost Engine 1. Emergency descent flight level one zero ten thousand, heading one eight zero. Can’t hear well due to missing flight deck window. Request vectors to nearest viable airport.”

Another warning light flashes and the plane yaws farther left than Scott wants as they descend. He swears and wrestles with it, finding the optimal amount of rudder to compensate for the uneven thrust of the single engine despite the pain that shoots through his ankle. He manages to attain a minor sense of stability, but then loses it again almost immediately when his vision tilts but doesn’t take his gut or the controls with it.

That can’t be good. He does  _ not _ feel well. Is that his head injury or…his thought is interrupted by the next response from ATC.

“American 6226, read...Engine 1...request? What else? You’relosingaltitude.”

Scott frowns as the controller’s voice seems to speed up until it all flows together and he can’t understand. Is the guy panicking? It’s already a struggle to hear him, so dude is not allowed to panic.  _ Scott’s  _ not allowed to panic, which honestly is just really unfair.

“American 6226. Say again. Can’t…” Scott blinks and shakes his head to try to clear his vision and shit,  _ that _ hurt. “Request vectors to nearest airport.”

“Japanair...eading310asc...evel360,” says the controller, rapidfire and broken. “...needyououtoftheway.”

“Affirmative, Japanair12. Leftheading310ascending360,” a woman’s voice says. She’s also speaking too fast, and even though Scott can hear her better, he’s still having a hard time following.

“American62..….aypointbarns. Canyoumaintainflightleveltwotwozero?”

Maintain flight level two two zero? Is that what he said? Scott doesn’t think he can, but how will he know unless he checks? He resets the autopilot to climb back to 22,000 and reapplies more thrust to his working engine, but it feels wrong, and not just in the way the aircraft is fighting the climb. It feels wrong in his gut, too. “Neg… negative. Need to descend.”

“Okay...an6226descendflightleveloneeightzero.”

Descending. Descending is good. Descending to what though? Why are they speaking so fast? “Say again for American 6226?”

“American6226Descendtoeighteenthousand.”

Oh. “Eighteen thousand.” It’s not enough. Even as he programs the level, he knows it’s not enough. “Need lower.”

“American6226Youcandescendonesixthousand.”

Sixteen thousand. Okay. How does he do that?

“American6226doyouread?”

Does he read? Read what?

“American6226, Center?”

The plane is taking more and more effort to hold stable, and the controls seem to be getting farther away. That’s kind of weird, but also kind of hilarious. Is the flight deck stretching? Should he be laughing? He can’t remember if he should be laughing.

“American6226Ident!”

Ident. Ident means he needs to do something, but Scott can’t place what. He knows he learned it a long time ago, maybe even during his very first flying lesson, but it’s not coming to him.

“American6226answerpleasewhenable.Confirmlevelonesixzero.AreyouabletoturnheadingonesevenzeroforwaypointBARNS?”

Wait. American 6226 is him, isn’t it? What did the controller say? Barns? He’s never had to use a barn as a landmark in a jet before, but why not? He keys his mic with effort. “American 62.. Say again. What barn?”

“He’shypoxic!” says an accented voice, clearer and louder than the controller. The same woman as before, maybe? “Gethimdowntotenthousandnow!”

There’s a pause. At least, Scott thinks there’s a pause. “Roger. American6226, descendone zerotenthousandimmediately! Douyoucopy? Descend. One. Zero. Ten. Thousand.”

Descend. That’s what Scott wanted in the first place, he thinks. He’s not sure why, but everything in him says things will get better if he descends. He concentrates, and manages to tell the autopilot he wants ten thousand. “Descending...descend, American…” American something.

It slowly gets warmer and clearer, and the plane isn’t fighting him as hard. But the numbness in his hands is turning into tingling and then burning and he feels woozy and nauseous. On the plus side, his head is clearing and the on freq speech slows into something more intelligible.

“—on’t know? We can follow him if you want us to relay? Maybe he can hear us and not you?” a woman is saying.

“Standby, Japanair 12,” a man responds. “United 42...eft heading 030, ascend...evel two five...”

“Left 030, ascending two five zero, United 427,” says a third voice. “Did he…is he descending?”

Scott keys his mic. “Uh, Center? American 6226. Flight level ten thousand. We need emergency diversion to the nearest viable airport.” Where the hell is he, anyway? Last he remembers he was up near Oklahoma City, but he seems to have lost some time and now he’s almost halfway to Texas.

That’s fucking terrifying. Not that being in a cockpit that’s open to the sky, with a dead engine, dead-feeling hands, a dead captain, and a possibly dead copilot isn’t already terrifying enough. He glances at Jeff but still can’t do anything for him.

“American 6226, Kansas City Center, glad to hear you feeling better,” the relief in the controller’s voice is palpable, although Scott’s not entirely sure what he means. “Check your oxygen levels, please. Uh, we can get you a right turn for Lubbock. It’s closest, although not by much. You can also turn left and have your choice of DFW or Dallas Love Field.”

Scott glances at the oxygen display, noting the cockpit and cabin are reading adequate levels consistent with ten thousand feet. That’s good. Then he sees the reading for the emergency supply that’s supposed to be coming through his mask. It’s way off, with only a fraction of the supplementary O2 he’s supposed to be getting.

Fuck. Holy fuck.

He rips the mask off his face, even though he’s clearly getting more oxygen now. He takes a shaky breath and then shoves the issue deep into his gut to freak out about later, adjusting his headphone mic towards his mouth and flipping the radio back to .

Another deep breath and he focuses on his choices. “Dallas Fort Worth.”

“Okay, American 6226, we’ll plan for DFW. Just want to confirm you know Lubbock and Love Field are available and a bit closer.”

He knows the ATC is doing his job, repeating pertinent information in case Scott’s distracted mind needs to hear it twice to register, especially if he was recently spouting hypoxia-induced nonsense. And it’s good to have multiple options and keep them open. But when he says DFW, he means it. “Appreciated. But I have a missing flight deck window and I’m on my own. My relief pilot is unconscious at best. Engine 1 has failed and won’t restart and I’m pretty sure I have frost bite on my hands as well as a concussion. I’d like the airport I’m most familiar with if I can get it, American 6226.”

“No problem, we’ll get you DFW. We’re coordinating which runways they can offer.” There’s a pause. “Can you...you’re alone, 6226? You’re listed as Paris-Los Angeles? No third pilot?”

He  _ is _ the third pilot. “One was sucked out the window and the other is incapacitated.”

“Oh my God,” says a different voice. The United pilot, maybe?

There’s a moment of silence from the center, then a disbelieving voice says: “Uh, American 6226. Can you confirm you...you lost a pilot out the window?”

Scott would rather not believe that either. “Affirm. One pilot lost, one pilot incapacitated, just me left and I’m not feeling all that great.”

“Um, okay. Roger. We’re setting you up for Dallas Fort Worth. Standby.”

Scott has to bite back the highly inappropriate ‘Roger’s dead, I’m Scott’ that bubbles up from his throat, and it’s at that point he realizes that he’s going to need to get very, very drunk after this, assuming that ‘this’ ends with him still being alive.

“Okay, American 6226. We’ve got you Runway 18 Right at Dallas Fort Worth. Will that work? They can give you whichever you like if it won't.”

Scott brings up the approach plate for 18 Right on Roger’s EFB, and it looks good to him, or at least as good as anything is going to look at the moment. “18 Right is fine, American 6226.”

“You’re passing out of my sector. Contact 128.1. They’re aware of your emergency. God bless, American 6226.”

_ God bless. _ Fucking great. “Switching to 28.1, thanks.”

**Author's Note:**

> My initial problem with this version of the scene was not having a reason for the captain-side oxygen mask to have failed. There’s no reason for a broken window to have damaged the pilot mask or the oxygen supply attached to it, and having a second, unrelated malfunction occur was too coincidental. I attempted to fix that by having Roger and Jeff put on their masks before the window broke, which gave Jeff enough oxygen to survive without Scott having to take the time to get a mask on him, and also removed Roger’s pilot-rated mask with Roger, meaning Scott’s bottled oxygen and less robust mask could cause the hypoxia I wanted. 
> 
> However, some further research made it clear that at the altitude and speed Scott was going, he’d never be able to hear ATC well enough for this interaction to occur as written. If he had hypoxia to this extent and couldn’t hear the controller, he’d either quickly lose consciousness and the plane would crash when it ran out of fuel, or the autopilot would get him down without any drama and he and the reader would just be confused as to what was happening. Neither option was appealing, so I rewrote the scene to remove everything but a hint of Scott's risk of hypoxia and the fact that Jeff and Roger had already put on their masks.
> 
> So, Aiko was originally meant to actually save Scott’s life by figuring out he was hypoxic before the controller did, already a stretch in itself, but I couldn’t make it work. She still kicks ass as a character though, so she ended up assisting with the plausibility of communications by relaying for Scott and Center.
> 
> Because I no longer needed a bunch of extra time for all this to happen, I could abbreviate the time delay between the mayday call and landing, and so I moved the whole incident farther southwest so Scott’s mayday is picked up by the Fort Worth Center and passed directly to Matt on Dallas Approach in the final draft, rather than involving Kansas City Center first, then Forth Worth Center, then Approach as originally intended.


End file.
